Say these words when you lie down and when you rise up,when you go out and when you return. In times of mourningand in times of joy. Inscribe them on your doorposts,embroider them on your garments, tattoo them on your shoulders,teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies,recite them in your sleep, here in the cruel shadow of empire:Another world is possible.

Thus spoke the prophet Roque Dalton:All together they have more death than we,but all together, we have more life than they. There is more bloody death in their handsthan we could ever wield, unlesswe lay down our souls to become them,and then we will lose everything. So instead,

imagine winning. This is your sacred task.This is your power. Imagineevery detail of winning, the exact smell of the summer streetsin which no one has been shot, the muscles you have neverunclenched from worry, gone soft as newborn skin,the sparkling taste of food when we knowthat no one on earth is hungry, that the beggars are fed,that the old man under the bridge and the womanwrapping herself in thin sheets in the back seat of a car,and the children who suck on stones,nest under a flock of roofs that keep multiplying their shelter.Lean with all your being towards that daywhen the poor of the world shake down a rain of good fortuneout of the heavy clouds, and justice rolls down like waters.

Defend the world in which we win as if it were your child.It is your child.Defend it as if it were your lover.It is your lover.

When you inhale and when you exhalebreathe the possibility of another worldinto the 37.2 trillion cells of your bodyuntil it shines with hope.Then imagine more.

Imagine rape is unimaginable. Imagine war is a scarcely credible rumorThat the crimes of our age, the grotesque inhumanities of greed,the sheer and astounding shamelessness of it, the vast fortunesmade by stealing lives, the horrible normalcy it came to have,is unimaginable to our heirs, the generations of the free.

Don’t waver. Don’t let despair sink its sharp teethInto the throat with which you sing. Escalate your dreams.Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them downany dark alleyway of history and not lose your way.Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourdOver the grim fog of exhaustion, and keep walking.

Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining.So that we, and the children of our children’s childrenmay live

_______Feel free to share this poem, but please do so as a link to this blog page. Poetry is labor. Please respect it.

About Aurora

Aurora Levins Morales is a disabled and chronically ill, community supported writer, historian, artist and activist. It takes a village to keep her blogs coming. To become part of the village it takes, donate here.

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